Thanks Scout, for wording it so elegantly. I know as well as the next guy that the efforts of gc.com are not cheap. And I understand that Jeremy has every right to persue profit; more power to him.
It does seem to raise that old red flag you to which you allude, when the bannerman suddenly changes tack and abandons his former priority of website cosmetics and utilities.
The Google ads are ugly and pedestrian. There must be a better way to encourage premium memberships and to increase profits than to bombard the site with crap.
--- In gpsstash@yahoogroups.com, "Scout" wrote: > > "Art Pennington" wrote: > > We need to remember,the purpose of business in America is to > > generate a profit for the owners. > > > > I wonder what the response would be if suddenly the site shut down > > because it could no longer turn a profit. Or worse, it was sold to > > someone who does not fully appreciate geocaching. > > Don't confuse the goals of Groundspeak, Inc., with the needs of the > geocaching hobby itself. Open source and distributed processing would > be ways to address the risks you raise. > > That is why, in the early days, some people wanted geocaching to have > an open database, so the costs and efforts and load could be > distributed, reducing the burden on any individual and eliminating the > risk of losing it all if one company went bankrupt or turned evil. > > Instead, Jeremy Irish decided to take geocaching private, going > commercial in order to raise the money to finance his business, > actively resisting those who tried to keep geocaching open. It was his > right to act this way, but it didn't have to be this way. We didn't > have to end up in a situation where one company can say, in effect, > keep paying us or maybe all your data might get lost. But that's where > we find ourselves anyway. > > -- > Scout >